


In Accord, Part Five - Challenge to the past

by ninemoons42



Series: In Accord [5]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Dark, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Archery, Assassins & Hitmen, Gen, Inspired by Art, Medieval Medicine, Swords & Fencing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-01
Updated: 2012-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-31 23:04:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/349325
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42





	In Accord, Part Five - Challenge to the past

  


title: In Accord, Part Five - Challenge to the past  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)**ninemoons42**  
word count: approx. 2475 in this installment  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
characters: Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr, Scott Summers, Jean Grey  
rating: R [may go up in later chapters]  
notes: Continuing from [this](http://jamesorangecat.tumblr.com/post/15666553689/this-is-for-the-lovely-k-a-belated-holidays-gift), and [this](http://fassyfaceavoythere.tumblr.com/post/15721726522/charles-stops-and-looks-him-straight-in-the-eyes). [Part One](http://archiveofourown.org/works/331285), [Part Two](http://archiveofourown.org/works/334798), [Part Three](http://archiveofourown.org/works/341335), [Part Four](http://archiveofourown.org/works/345593). These are not the Charles and Erik you think you know.  
Work in Progress. Please heed the rating.

  
The village vanishes; the voices calling for him, concerned and fearful and surprised, ebb into the distance.

Erik runs, and he has no idea where he's going. Helplessness grips at him, catching his ankles, winding around his wrists. He wants to run for his life, he wants to find his death.

Step after crashing step he scrambles - lumbering, clumsy, blind - his feet, his hands, every time he touches the ground, every time he stumbles, every time he picks himself up, every time he keeps falling forward, out and away. He barely sees the trees; he climbs out of the valley, each step seeming to drag him back down into the mire of his pain, into his past, into the accusation in the girl's eyes.

There are footsteps behind him. He can't look over his shoulder. He knows all too well the faces of the shadows chasing him: a man and a woman, weapons at the ready, their faces painted with betrayal and rage.

And at their heels - at Erik's heels, always running behind him, always ahead of him - the boy with the red hair.

He runs, and there are things in his way. The world is a whirl of impenetrable shadows wrapping around him. There is no light for him and there is no path. He runs the same spiral of darkness, again and again, round and round, an endless effort, a misery without surcease, a pain without pity that burrows into his skin and buries itself in his bones.

No safety, no succor, no salvation. Not for one such as him.

He runs, and something entangles his light cloak and Erik goes down with a strangled yell of pure panic.

He hits the ground hard. After that, every movement is instinct: he covers his head; he curls tightly in on himself. If he can make himself into the smallest target he can possibly manage, he might be able to survive the coming attack. It is only a matter of time before his pursuers catch up with him - he's already as good as given himself away. Why did he shout? Poor form, the kind of mistake that will cost him his life.

He's doing it all wrong. He's a child again, an unblooded boy, stupid and reckless and callow. He lashes out, blindly, and the shadows are fighting back and now he thinks this is where it will all end.

A fitting end - not one he wanted or needed or expected. An end all the same.

After all, he's nothing more than a sell-sword: and the first lesson all sell-swords learn is that life ceases to become important. The fight is all. The task is all. There is nothing else. Find a way. Finish the task. Evade capture. Vanish. Repeat all over again.

How could have have forgotten all these things?

How could he have failed, on that one night?

How could it be possible that he is still alive?

He opens his eyes - or he thinks he opens them - he sees flames, now, flames and blood like copper and rust on his hands. A simple assignment. Pallid moonlight swallowed by scudding clouds. A swift mountain breeze. Snow in a thick layer, glittering beneath their feet. Steady silent steps. A home on a small outcropping. A long climb up from the village.

He remembers being surprised by the amount that he had been offered, and he remembers that the man and the woman he had been working with had been more eager to take the job.

Scott, his mind supplies, reluctantly. Scott and his quarterstaff.

Scott's partner and accomplice: Jean, knives fanned out in her hand.

He remembers being reluctant to work with them again. They were uncontrollable; they delighted in death and in destruction; they were known to kill for the sheer unholy joy of it. They were notorious for leaving far too many corpses behind on each job taken and completed.

Obstacles, Jean had called them, trifles, all the while laughing that manic laugh of hers.

In a flash of moonlight reflecting off their swords and knives he suddenly recalls Jean's face as the three of them looked down at their target. Her eyes blacker than the night. The lines around her mouth etched deeper and deeper - pain, hatred, a mind dangerously close to its breaking point.

He remembers that Scott had looked no better - that the shadows beneath his eyes had only gotten deeper and deeper, for all they'd been told this was a simple mission, no need to bother with laying out plans and traps and strategies.

He remembers that the three of them had stopped talking to each other long before this point, and that even the way the two of them faced each other - and him - had begun to reek more of despair instead of affection. There wasn't even the faintest hint of camaraderie.

And vividly Erik remembers throwing open the doors to the house - lost in his memories now, lost to the horror of that night, he could see the man of the house shouting and running to the small bed in the corner, hunching over it protectively, shouting for his wife to run.

The woman. Golden hair pinned up at the top of her head - but not for long, waist-length tresses coming down in a blazing mass as she pulled her hairpins out and threw them at Erik - one, two, three. He remembers three sharp stabbing strikes, and pain, followed by a strange haze that quickly darkened around him, that quickly engulfed him.

Erik remembers freezing in the act of drawing his sword, remembers falling to his knees, gracelessly.

He remembers Scott rushing forward with his quarterstaff, a silent slashing shadow in his dark disguise, and he remembers their target sidestepping him. He remembers the hard CRACK of a fist against bone. A quiet, final sigh, and the thump of a body falling to the floor.

And then Erik remembers a desperate scream, a vivid drop of crimson on the back of his hand from the wound in his cheek - and Jean laughing, beautiful and broken. Knives flying - into the man crouched over the bed, one in his throat and one in his heart. The rush of her movement, evading Erik's quelling arm easily - falling to her knees before their target, driving a knife upwards into their target's heart. Steady hands, Jean's blood-stained grin, the wailing cry of a child.

The memory fades.

And vaguely, he remembers the aftermath, outside, on the slope of the mountain - he remembers throwing one of the hairpins at Jean; remembers grazing her as she lifted Scott to his feet. Unnatural strength, the wild look in her eyes, her last knife in hand.

Erik remembers more pain.

He raises his hands to his unseeing eyes.

He sees the shadow of a knife embedded in his right palm, its point sticking out the back of his hand. Better him than the girl he'd yanked roughly from her dead father's arms - blue-gray eyes, pale golden hair.

His memory of that night is full of firelight on snow, and the anguished screams of the little girl.

He hadn't killed her parents.

He had tried everything he could do to save her.

It's never going to be enough. He can't atone, or tell the truth - that would mean owning all his deeds, the good ones and the bad ones combined.

There is a step behind him.

Erik is still blinded. He leaps to his feet anyway, lashes out.

There is a voice calling his name, all too familiar.

"No, not you," Erik cries out. He curses under his breath, and knows that if he opens his eyes he will come face to face with the boy again, that maybe this time the boy has come for him.

At last.

Erik moves toward the voice. He's a whirlwind, lashing out with fists and feet, as best as he can while he's blinded by his memories, by his lies, by his past.

"Erik!"

He doesn't recognize the voice. He strikes, again and again. Finally, suddenly, he hits something. A loud crack of fist against bone, and someone cries out.

Erik's smile is wan and humorless. Tears track down his cheeks. The voice helps him home in on his target. He cocks his fist and rushes forward, screaming wordlessly, helplessly.

The world is murky shadows to him, even now and he crashes into something - into someone. Suddenly he's on his knees, crying out in pain.

Iron grip on his wrist.

He's been here before, but he can't remember how.

That voice is still calling his name.

Erik struggles against the hold on his arm; he tries to surge to his feet. Weakness will only get him killed. He has to get up. He has to fight.

There is a cool touch on his shoulder, just above the stab wound.

There is a voice saying, softly, firmly: "I am so sorry."

Then there is a moment when everything is wrong with the world. There is someone stepping into his personal space - Erik grunts: he can't get away.

A terrific blow to his shoulder and midsection and Erik yells as he finds himself being hurled through the air. He is keenly aware of the exact moment when his feet leave the ground - and the exact moment he crashes back down, all the wind knocked out of him and still unable to see.

All he can do is feel - and he feels a weight fall heavily onto his knees, he hears - feels - someone breathing very close by. His heart is beating frantically, as though threatening to burst. Panic and shock and pain ringing in his ears.

"I really do apologize," that voice says. Soothing. Calm.

Familiar. But as if coming from a great distance. "My methods are...unorthodox, to say the least. But good, when they're effective, yes? Here you are, and perhaps you're not yet calm but right now you're not moving. It's a start."

He's lost the fight.

But he doesn't feel like he's been defeated.

Erik groans, instead.

Once again that cool touch on his skin - pressing over his heart, this time. "I've hurt you - I'll look after you later. But perhaps you might let me tell you a story, you might let me answer your question - you see, I don't forget. I just didn't trust myself to answer you honestly. It's not your fault, of course. Just...bad memories, the way you're caught up in yours right now."

Finally, Erik finds his voice. Finally, he speaks.

It's not a question. It's the beginning of an answer. "Charles."

"One and the same, Erik. You asked me if I'd ever been to war. And the answer I gave you was yes. Will you let me tell you?"

He doesn't wait for Erik to answer. "I always wanted to be a healer; perhaps it was the only thing I could remember, that people would come to my father when they were in pain.

"My father was a healer who stayed in one place - he said it suited his temper. As for me, I was different, and the village did not really need two of us - so I was willing, and I was happy, to take a wandering path. Perhaps he and I hoped that I would find a place where I would be needed.

"I left my home right after the beginning of the Great Northern War."

Erik gasps and sits up, and now, suddenly, he can see. The mists over his eyes clear at last, and he suddenly sees that the forest is full of rustling shadows and a pale fading light. He can barely see Charles, who is still sitting right on top of his knees. Just far enough to reach out to him, and he brushes Charles's shoulder - but Charles shrugs him off, gently.

"Three weeks out from the village I found myself on a ridge overlooking one of the river battles. I knew so little, and all I knew was that I had to help.

"What a fool I was.

"I ran into the battle. I began to help. I tied white streamers to my arms and to my medicine pack so that I could be recognized. I was taken up into one of the mercenary groups and I did what I could for their wounded and for their dying.

"You know what it's like. I don't have to tell you. After a while I stopped trying to scrub the blood out of my skin. I worked, and dreamt that I worked. Skin and bone and everywhere the pain. Sometimes the fighting would swirl around me as I tried to save lives."

Somehow Charles's voice remains steady and even; the words are quiet and soothing in the soft susurrus of the surrounding forest.

"There were men who talked to me as they died. They told me about their lovers, their children; they talked to me as though in dreams, asking me for wine and food."

Erik finds his voice at last. "Did anyone ever tell you that they were being hunted? That they were being followed?"

"By those who come to claim the dead. Yes. I never believed in them, because I cannot believe in what I cannot see."

Erik looks away, looks up, but the night sky falling above is as dark as the forest all around. "I have been seeing one of them for a long time now. He - that was him, on the beach, when you saw me fall to my knees. He has red hair and gray eyes." A fragment of memory, of the boy's sweetly whispering voice. "He says he knows you."

He feels a tremor run through Charles.

"It is a pity," the healer murmurs, suddenly, "and it is a blessing, that here we are in the darkness where you cannot see - but perhaps you know what I am talking about."

The grip on his wrist is far gentler, but Erik recognizes it, suddenly - Charles's hands on a bow, on his opponent's throat or his arm or his shoulder.

He's being made to reach forward - his fingertips brush soft cloth - and then a startling warmth, convulsive movement, Charles's throat working as he swallows - and then raised lines, jagged and far too smooth.

Erik knows what he's touching, suddenly, and knows that the lines run a harsh scarlet line around the healer's neck, and he doesn't want to know what could have caused this, but Charles is speaking again, and now the voice is relentless, rasp of a sword from its scabbard:

"I wonder if he was there when I was almost hanged for the crime of saving a life."  



End file.
